He was once a stallion, strong with a chiseled jaw and tall stature, now well past his mid-80’s and considerably withered. My ears were playing tricks on me because I thought he said, “We don’t have a Costco in Heaven.” No one in ear-shot looks surprised, leaving me no clue as to what was really said.

A smile parts my lips and I feel the tears well. I selfishly stifle my emotions so that no one will see, realizing that I feel a measure of comfort knowing there’s no Costco in Heaven. It’s a private moment in a busy day.

The holidays rip at me, I want time to stand still so that I may mourn and gnash my teeth and wallow, I know that is not the way. That the departed would be ill honored by such shallow, predictable, useless and self-serving behavior, but for my grief… Occasionally it bunches and bulges, surges and threatens to overtake me. Every loss, fresh. Once again deep, open wounds fill and bleed freely. I miss you.

Embarking on the next great adventure, seeking what is beyond the veil of this life…my mind has been on him and what might be out there ready, waiting. Will he explore heaven right now as I ponder the man whose life is too large to capture in an obituary, or even a long winded tribute. Will there be mountains to climb, how high will he go? What will marathons look like, though are those from heaven?

If you’re there when he arrives, circle ’round, find a spot then get acquainted. Expect the best story time, but you’ll have to be patient, he’s not one to boast, he’s not telling to hear his own voice.

I told you beforehow his days were numbered. There were weeks that stretched to months and turned into more than a year. It’s time to remember my days are numbered, each of ours are. The concept circles inside of my head to not let a doctor or a disease be the reminder I need.

Someday will come for me too.

For today and each day I am here is an opportunity at love and adventure, at discovery, at chasing my joy like a fast paced foxhunt where the fox and I both win because we are one and we played as hard and as faithful as our spirit would allow.

On the 11th of December the world got a little less light, lost some of it’s sparkle. The mantle we carry to give, to care, to do more good than bad, to forgive and to love just got heavier, our shares increased. The balance of what we are to bring: a measure of good, of light and the challenge to give more than we take grew in the wee hours of the morning when Johnny passed out of this life and into the next.

I wholeheartedly detest two things, New Years Resolutions and Valentine’s Day, so I’m not waiting until January 1st to make sure everyday I start fresh, make a mark and try to climb above it. I’m not waiting until Valentine’s Day to start spreading my love around. I love you and all your mess, your flaws, your iniquity and your bright and glorious self, your goodness, generosity and creativity. I love you.

Don’t wait, start that adventure, run that race, take that trip, fly that heart. Go now.

Good-bye for now Johnny Yu, 7/26/48 to 12/11/15. Thank-you for setting such an amazing example of love and life, generosity and the example of largeness and joy!

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I’ll be honest, I was hoping you wouldn’t see me this morning. Sure I had a smile on my face but I was wishing, instead, for a bag over my head.

If you see me in the morning commute, dropping kids off at the pool…er, I mean at the school–or either actually–and I am wearing my “nice mama” glasses, you will know, I have given up on the day already. At least I am strongly considering it…another story, for another day perhaps…

My “nice mama glasses” are hideous. A pair of wire rimmed glasses more than ten years old, bent, scratched and really, really ugly, they were the emergency back-up pair to my “sexy librarian”, Kate Spade, tortoise-shell frames that inevitably fell victim to a puppy several years back.

I only wear the “nice mama” glasses out of desperation, late at night or mornings when getting up early enough to put in contacts seems insurmountable.

For whatever reason Orion, 4 years old, has named them my “nice mama” glasses.

“mama, can we get under the covers and watch a movie together?” he will ask.

“Aw!” Heart melting, “Yes, that sounds nice. You are so sweet.”

A satisfied smile will sweep across his whole face, then the tiniest flicker of a shadow before he will decree;

without my “nice, mama glasses”

with my glasses that make me suddenly nice.

“but first you have to put on your “nice mama” glasses.”

Sometimes they are my, “good mama” glasses it just depends on the day.

Weirdo little kids. Just like weirdo adults, they have ideas in their heads about what different things mean, even innocuous or arbitrary items that come off and on. I promise you, I am just as mean and nasty with my “nice mama” glasses on as I am without them.

I’d like to get another pair of “sexy librarian” glasses, I actually see a pair in the very near future. It’s tough being so sexy and not having a pair of spectacles so that everyone else knows it too…Until then, even though I hate the ratty, crooked, scratched-up, gold-rimmed, “nice mama” glasses, I am glad someone thinks they look good on me.

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It’s been there for two years, almost two years anyway. It feels like a lifetime and though I don’t know if anyone else ever noticed–for me–it was my sweet, and silent, tiny little piece of armor. Strong, and still soft like when someone grabs hold of you, gives you a hug and whispers strength in your ear because they know you’ll never admit you need it. That piece of heart shaped paper with four little names on it was just like that.

It seems barely a breath has passed, though in fact two years have gone by, my life and everything in it felt fragile then. My rational, grown-up part of my mind knew the life it wanted, but my heart was fragile, hurting and full of doubts. The hardest year in recent memory was coming to a close, no resolutions and no promise of improvement. Emotionally I was adrift, clinging to vague hopes and lost dreams, I clung to the fact that despite feeling like I might die, no one had…actually died…

Days would slip by when I could not eat, I would force myself to drink water, cringing at the thought of food. I withered, physically, emotionally, spiritually…I felt like I was dying. I was in hiding, hoping that all of the turmoil would melt away but not at the expense of going back to the past.

Then one day–admittedly in a haze of emotions a little tiny hand, no longer the chubby fist of a toddler and not quite the dexterous hand of a big kid–reached from the backseat and tapped me, handing off this tiny scrap of love.

Imperfect and cut with safety scissors, a heart, on it the words; mama, papa, Apollo, Orion. Scrawled with his tiny hand, in imperfect penmanship, made in stolen moments after a class project. Mama at the top of the list. It really was up to me…

The love that holds us…

I am not a sentimentalist.

Not by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing feels better, for me, than letting go. Lucky for me, when I let go I rarely ever look back, that coupled with impatience for “junk memories” means I rarely remember anything long enough to regret getting rid of it.

I just held that scrap of red paper and wept before I could even start the car to pull out of the school parking lot. I knew, then and there, not just what I wanted but that I had strength enough to get there. A sense that if I could just hold on, the pieces of my puzzle would start fitting back together. I felt comforted.

God, I hate not being an open book, but no one could have or would have wanted to hear the crap I was sorting. Even if they did, would I ever come back from the judgments they would pass, the doubts they would have about me?

That little scrap of my heart said I was going to be okay. Patience…have I mentioned I have none? So it was that I faced, head on, a test I knew I was otherwise not equipped to make it through.

I offered accolades to Apollo telling him how much I loved his gift, I held it all the way home then tucked it into an empty compartment in the car, for months that’s where it lived. At the school pick-up I would pull it out sometimes when I was waiting. A guaranteed smile would wash over my face, even on the bad days.

In the spring I quietly brought my love scrap into the house and mounted it to the side of our stainless steel refrigerator. I’m sure someone noticed but all mom’s are required to keep various gestures of affection from our children. No one knew this was actually a direct answer to personal prayer, executed by my own.

Family, it means more to me than I can adequately put into words. If you know me at all, know my deepest held beliefs, know that my family is vast and extended and many are my dearest and favorite friends, especially my sisters and my husband, even my own mom, than you would not be at all surprised how much this paper screamed that life was going to be ok…eventually.

Last week, when I was cleaning, I took down my love scrap and recycled it to the paper gods. I don’t need it anymore, this picture is enough. So thankful for little hands and little scraps of armor.

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It Was Night Time

I was driving home at 9:30 at night a few days ago, top down, wind in my hair and it happened. That familiar hush, of Sonoma County, in the night time, the damper to sound and traffic. The night sky was glowing the way it does when low clouds, or high fog, are hovering just overhead–compressed into a sound dampener. Total dejavous swept over me, obliterating that moment and smashing it into hundreds of moments where I’d been in an entirely different state. A different world really.

Here I am in Bohemia, and I am having a flashback to CowCountry.

In the high deserts of Central Oregon, the nights are crisp and clear. It sounds like an exaggeration to the rest of the country but trillions of stars stand out like bright sequins, the light from the stars so bright that the Cascade Mountains are backlit, a ragged, majestic silhouette of razor sharp peaks . None of that was happening here in Sonoma.

The night sky was glowing softly, alive and lit from within, like soft bioluminescence. There are no real mountains (sorry sonoma…truth hurts) but the air smelled familiar, taking me back to so many summer And fall nights growing up. In Sonoma–in the neighborhoods close to where I live–evening smells rotate with different times of the year; there’s fragrant jasmine nights, eucalyptus, rain, mown grass, sometimes apple blossoms and daffodils, fermenting (rotting fruit, usually grapes but at my house it could be figs) even wine can fill the air from various wineries…other nights the pungent smell of feedlots and ranch stuff can hang in the air (there are plenty of cows in Central Oregon but rare, unless you’re the rancher, to smell them on any given night)…and other times of year (in Sonoma) you can drive around and smell out which of your neighbors are pot farmers…

Tonight it just smelled like a late summer or fall night in Central Oregon, it smelled like a wood fire, a forest fire. No seriously. NorCal is on fire, Oregon is on fire, Washington, Idaho and Montana are all beating down fires…I don’t think fog is hanging over head, I think it might be smoke.

Rampant fires are taking homes, lives and property. When I was in school I took four years of Forestry. It’s an Oregon thing. I even took college credit courses in forestry fire-fighting, built firelines, did some backburning…cleared a lot of brush and understory… I wanted to grow up to be a superhero. A firefighting superhero, I got side tracked with boys, and life rearranged some of those one-time dreams, but I remember how rewarding it was and how much work it was and I remember during one course a fire we were following had several firefighters from Arizona die. I remember how serious it is. How devastating everything can be in the blink of an eye.

So I’m driving home at nine o’clock at night, the top off the jeep, looking at the glowing night air and doing something I haven’t done in a while…thinking about families whose loved ones are out protecting others from fire, putting themselves between homes and fires…If I’m honest I found myself saying prayers. I don’t know what makes another person decide they are willing to risk their life for the welfare of strangers, but I am thankful for them, not just the ones fighting fires.

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“Buddhism has a word called Vipassanā, or (vipaśyanā) (विपश्यना for all of you Sanskrit speakers. It means insight into the true nature of reality, and it’s Three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering [or unsatisfactoriness], and non-self.

“Roughly translated they mean nothing is permanent including you, shit happens and you aren’t a special snowflake.”

“What!? WTF? F@€% you for saying that, I am too a special snowflake!” My mind is spinning.

I read this ‘proverb’ weeks ago from one of my favorite, thought provoking, facebook tribe. My immediate, knee-jerk[face] reaction was to be incensed and annoyed. How dare someone tell us all that we aren’t special…I’m special.

I am really.

I may have done some trudging around, had a bit of defiance in my step, while ruminating about this particular ignorance. Days past and I pondered. Wow, you think you know a religion and then…then this…not a special snowfake…none of it matters.

It all matters…right?

As the blind, indignation of being told I wasn’t special faded and my ego tried to recover I kept thinking and pondering this perspective on Vipassanā.

At some point in my dejectedness I realized that while no two snowflakes are the same, they are still all snow. We don’t catch a snowflake on our mittens and rejoice over how insanely unique each one is, it’s just snow. I hate admitting it, but snow is neat (from far away or whilst on vacation…oh and on Christmas…) but snow is just snow.

For some reason in the interim of exploring why I was upset to not be special I happened across another personal gem. I’m struggling to find the words to relate, in a way that will make sense and have as few ums, and grunts as possible, so stay with me.

What does it all mean if none of it means a dang thing? What’s the fucking point of all of it?

Quit.

There’s no point so let go. You’ll never be special. You’ll never be perfect…

I can finally start a naked commune at my house and quit wearing clothes, stop tempering my potty mouth, start smoking and drinking like I’m the rockstar I thought I’d be by now…

Just when I was about to give it all away a quiet whispering threaded its way into my noodle

…”know by doing…”

It doesn’t make sense now that I’ve written it but in my heart I understood it to mean that we can believe whatever we want about the person we are, but do we know it because we’ve experienced it.

We may believe that our morals are unshakable, our resilience to adversity above the cut. We can believe that we are charitable, and that we know how to work hard, have great love and or an unmatched ability to forgive…insert whatever beliefs you have about who you are…what makes you ‘special’?

Do I live it, I must ask.

When challenged within my iniquities do I faulter? Do I succumb to my addictions, my frailty, my fragility, impulses, desires, do I indulge in my gluttony? If I do, do I recover, do I confront failures or continue to make excuses, give up, turn up the volume of distractions, defining who I am, not by my actions but by my own inner dialog so that I can live without guilt, without change and without experiencing the fullness of my best version of me?

That’s it.

Can I be in pursuit of becoming the most stunning version of myself or do I need the validation of being special.

When I get over that “rainbow bridge” I want to look at my reflection and not see all the places I let myself down –holes in my soul–for not working as hard as I could have, not living as much as I should have, not giving all I have…I want to see perseverance, generosity, forgiveness, resilience, muscles from hard work and brains from learning. I imagine lots of scars across my body and my heart, and I hope that everyone of them turns into a treasured memory of becoming stronger, better, smarter, kinder, quicker and I hope I still have a mean, twisted sense of humor.

That is to say that I absolutely am guilty of trying to follow through with every “good idea” that pops into my head and sometimes…well somebody has to pay the price of that. Clearly, not that smart, I still haven’t figured out that “someone” is Matilda.

All summer I have had one day off a week… If by one day off, you mean clumping together parts of a couple different days. I’m lucky that my work days are things I already love doing and that I have creative jobs to begin with, but in true Matilda fashion, I hate having a schedule. It’s so much more fun to choose as I go. Buck wild and full throttle.

Last week, on Thursday I went to bed, running through the next day’s “To Do” list in my head:

deliver 7 year old and his bud to Summer Camp by 8:30

proceed to the gym-no detours…

drop off three year old for 2.5 hours in child-care,

Hit the weight-room

hit booty-camp with my bestie

hurry home for lunch

complete animal husbandry consisting of

taking care of my rescue flock…the parrots;

birdie play time-outside

birdie treat time-outside

food and water clean/change-in and outside

more playtime in the sun and maybe bird showers-outside

feed and water the dinosaurs er, chickens

clean chicken hutch… it’s been a week…ew…

write and publish at least two blog articles for my favorite boss.

but I may have to pick up the big kid and his bud from Summer Camp somewhere in the middle of writing…

make dinner

clean house

fold pile of laundry instead of perpetually dressing from the clean pile…

This is a normal day off…even if the writing eats up seven hours of my day…and it can…

He’s back again. It’s 65 degrees, he’s cold. He wouldn’t be if he’d just get into bed with me, snuggle under the covers and shut up…go back to sleep like a normal person…

I am badgered into dressing him.

Never mind that he’s wearing ratty navy blue sweats with orange pinstripes and a spiffy, new turquoise and white pollo, He’s dressed, I’m not going to dwell on fashion.

I reset my alarm

Very shortly he’s board.

Yes. Whatever you want.

T.V.

My ipad.

Whatever you want kid, just go play.

I reset my alarm

Then, shoes, he’s not asking…but incessantly droning on about it right beside my sleeping head. Oh good, go outside, where I can’t hear all your shenanigans(…the voice in the back of my head is belittling me, warning me and comparing me to a delinquent, useless parent…oh well, let go voice…)sleep. Sleep is what I need…

I reset my alarm.

No time has passed at all before my head is pounding again and I am awakened by the whiniest, most pathetic child you’ve ever heard…he may have been there for a while judging by the desperation in his voice…something about food. Aparently he is hungry…

A brief negotiation ensues to determine what food stuffs we have on hand that will not require my departure from my soft, warm, lovely, fluffy bed. Yellow cheese and apples…Okay.

Brat, “But I need it cut”

FortheLoveofGod…Just get the block of cheese and eat it and the apple whole!!!!

I mean, “can you bring it to me baby?” he’s off, pitter-pattering down the hall. After a brief pause he’s returned. So cute…he has an apple and my aged cheddar. Precious little…punk…

I totally had my heart set on getting up at 8:00…a brief struggle with my conscience proceeds.

6:41: “can you be so brave and get mommy a knife?”

The impish smile, implies he can.

“I mean it, no running, soft, slow, steps. Use two hands. Hold it like this. Can you do that?” A nod and his retreating pitter-patter.

He returns with the biggest Cutco Chef’s Knife I have… OMG.

Cut apple. Cut Cheese. Stow knife safely in bureau drawer.

Butcher knife’s in dresser drawers is totally a normal thing…

…Reset alarm…

I rolled out of bed 18 minutes before Camp Started, put on my bathing suit, and a t-shirt, and threw some essentials into my purse. Sunglasses, kid swimsuits, goggles and sunscreen are always loaded by the front door. Dropped the kids at camp, went straight to breakfast then the pool where I stayed for a good portion of my day.

Swimming with my three year old for an hour and 20 minutes, lazing in the sun watching him play for almost an hour, sipping large glasses of ice water and snacking on fruit. As I laid there, the pressures I had put on myself, expectations of the day and judgments about what is required began dissipating, slipping away. I felt the sun sinking into me, re-charging me. Three hours slipped by and it was just after 1:00 before I knew it.

Some ice-cream was in order, then with time flying we retrieved the big kids from camp and came home.

I’ll see your crazy and raise you a flock of feathers…

I still had enough time to take care of my flock and write one article. Man I needed that day. I needed to not care for a few hours and do nothing, even if I did have to dress from the clean pile for one more day…

Or any other member of our military for that matter.

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Who doesn’t want to get paid to sit and drool on their computers while remixing and regurgitating and re-spinning entirely new ways to get you to read all the life changing things you need, right this minute. Things that will improve your lips, your life, your smile, your orgasms, give you thicker hair, better skin, longer life.

I’ve been writing blogs for big dollars. I’m so good I think I will be moving on. Climbing up in the spin world. That and I’m getting tired, bored in fact.

Does something ail you?

I bet it does.

Soft in the middle, fuzzy in the noodle?

Headaches, malaise, achy joints?

Probably from the fillings you got when you were 12, compacted by the synergistic mix of toxins you’ve been exposed to. Everything from fluoridated water and GMO’s to xenoestrogens or worse, yellow no. 9.

In fact a conspiracy thrives in your own backyard (and this I’m not making up) to continue poisoning the hearts and minds of good, hardworking people everywhere, but especially the gullible ones. (The idea seems a good candidate for originating right here in California…if not then I’m sure it came straight from D.C.)

If you’ve already had all of your silver fillings replaced with something mercury free and only drink safe non fluoridated water, you’re already avoiding foods that mimic estrogen in the human body and staying away from that pesky yellow no. 9, then surely you also don a tinfoil hat when you get on the internet, but it isn’t so aliens can’t see into your mind’s eye, no–it’s to jam the NSA from reading your thoughts. Good thinking.

All of those preventative measures definitely make you smart enough to keep up with me for the rest of this article. You’re savvy. You have on your tinfoil hat…that’s actually made from aluminum foil…

I’ve been writing blogs and getting paid for well over a year. I’m so good now that I think its time to start thinking about my next big gig. Time for moving up in the spin world.

I think I am proficient in spin so I’m working on my best campaign yet. You may have heard of it. It needs some work in its current condition…may seem rather evil…maybe you haven’t heard of it. Come to think of it, those politicians are crafty, so don’t feel bad if this is all news to you.

The current government, no–I’m not working for D.C. yet–just trying to get my foot in the door–needs new spin. Clever marketing in order to turn an evil, twisted conglomerate of policy, that tries to keep all the cattle–I mean voters happy–into something a little less convoluted…or at least palitable.

It goes something like this:

The oil company gets a tax subsidy to maintain their profits.

We pay taxes on the gas we consume…purportedly to support maintaining the roads.

So who’s paying the oil companies?

(There must be a magic money tree at the white house too…just like the one I have in my backyard…)

The car manufacturers are required to produce cars with a higher average MPG. This keeps things looking good on paper but not in reality.

So they make one shitty hybrid that they don’t even want you to buy. This in turn lowers their company’s overall gas mileage “on average” based on ALL the model types they offer. (They aren’t the effers you want to think they are. They just play by the rules, rules our government makes trying to keep the asses the masses happy.)

Government thinks there are too many people who are too stupid to follow logic so they play spin games. Unfortunately, it mostly does work for them.

It gets even more convoluted…

Gas Taxes we pay at the pump are supposed to go towards road maintenance.

But if you drive in a regular vehicle as a significant part of your job (i.e. use the roads and the gas more than I do…you get a tax write off to offset the cost)

If you buy a hybrid…and don’t buy any gas…but still drive as much or more (which is likely) than I do (why else would you justify a hybrid…just to “goGreen”? Riiight) you get a federal tax credit. I guess it serves as a shiny green distraction to offset the “where the hell did this money come from?” thought that you should have had, and make you feel good for being such a good citizen and saving the air and fossil fuels.

In fact the Federal government has been offering tax incentives to buy green cars for so long that the carrot seems to be working.

Working well too because now the government is proposing that drivers of electric cars pay a road tax to help pay for the roads they are driving on.

So they get a carrot to buy the car but then don’t get to count the dollars they are saving because they aren’t buying enough gas…in fact, if Uncle Sam had his way we would pay a big enough tax to equal what we are saving.

Wait a minute…What about the hundreds of dollars in car registrations Californians get to pay…Every. Single. Year…that’s supposed to go to roads too…I can’t even touch this part yet.

Does all of this sound like it smells? (Because it totally smells like poop) Now. Imagine if I can make all of this smell as pretty as I do after a good 8 mile run…admit it, that would be an improvement, and about as much as we can hope for…imagine the big bucks I could rake in.

Here is the truth. Government hopes to keep us ignorant. Chasing carrots and totally only looking at what is in front of our face. They really don’t have a choice, they want to keep their good jobs and good healthcare so they have to feed us half truths and keep us mostly in the dark.

It will stay that way until people want to get rid of all the BS, all the spin doctors, all the loopholes…and since I don’t see that happening…what’s the saying? If you can’t beat ’em, join em.

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